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It all depends on what you want to do, what your preferences are, how much (if at all) you're willing to abandon what you already know to learn something else...

There's no easy answer, there's just personal preference, and really the only way to figure out if any one OS will work for you is to spend some time using them (and preferably in contact with someone who knows it pretty well so they can show you the ropes and help you out).

If you prefer some prestige, use Mac. If you need simple support (without many efforts to troubleshooting your OS), choose Windows. And if you like to adventure, you may try to install Hackintosh or Linux in your PC

Two of the most popular Linux "distributions," Ubuntu and Fedora, offer "live-CD" versions. You simply burn the image to a disk, then boot your computer with it. It'll be much slower than installing the OS to your hard drive, of course, but you'll be able to play with each of these distros without making a commitment. Here are some torrent links:

While Windows users typically all see the same desktop, you have a choice of desktop environment when it comes to Linux. Both the links above will install the "GNOME" desktop by default. If you'd like to see another desktop called "KDE" (my preference), use this link instead:http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/tor...ve-KDE.torrent

One thing you'll quickly discover is that these distributions don't contain many multimedia codecs or software to watch DVDs. That's because most of this software is encumbered by patents or other restrictions that make it illegal to distribute them into countries like the United States. This software is available from third-party "repositories" like Livna for Fedora users or the RestrictedFormats repository for Ubuntu.

As an overall package in terms of usability, hardware compatibility, software development Windows is still king for the desktop. 32bit is XP territory, 64 bit is Vista. OSX I see nothing really special about - mutton dressed as lamb, you pay a lot of money for limited hardware options and limited upgradeability. It's stable because it never has to deal with constant change. Linux is a lot better in the aspect that its free and it's constantly evolving. It's hardware support is still limited but by nature it's designed to be deployable on any config. It's at stage where there are specific situations I'd use linux - a NAS, a torrentbox, a a small home server. It's just not a full desktop replacement ATM.

Linux is a lot better in the aspect that its free and it's constantly evolving. It's hardware support is still limited but by nature it's designed to be deployable on any config. It's at stage where there are specific situations I'd use linux - a NAS, a torrentbox, a a small home server. It's just not a full desktop replacement ATM.

I have to respectfully disagree with this opinion. Other than support for some wifi hardware, and perhaps some older devices like scanners with proprietary interfaces, there's very little hardware that Linux doesn't support out of the box. In fact, it can be much harder to build a Windows machine from scratch since you'll often need to dig up manufacturers' drivers for various hardware devices like network cards that are supported natively in any modern Linux distribution.

My daughter has a Dell notebook running Ubuntu, and I have two desktop machines running Fedora 8. (I also have a server and a firewall both running CentOS.) I don't care about playing games on a PC; we have a PS3 for that. I can't think of a task I've needed to do on a desktop machine that I haven't been able to do using Linux in the three or so years I've been using it as my only desktop OS.

aye, outside of certain families of wireless cards and a few obnoxious printers, I've had absolutely no problem with any hardware and ubuntu playing nicely in the last several years. I hear random people have issues with a certain camera or mp3 player once in a while.

Again, I agree with martino. It's a highly subjective question. I would base it around needs. What do you use it for? If you do a lot of programming, Linux would suit you fine, though personally I never did quite understand it. I just know it's complicated and impossible to hack, lol. If you like music and gaming, Macintosh PC's are pretty popular for that stuff. Personally, I use Windows Vista because it suits my needs fine for surfing the internet and watching anime and doing schoolwork. I also have a dual hard drive so I don't give a rat's ass about how much memory the Vista Operating System takes up, cause I have a whole other 111 GB to store stuff, plus a 250 GB external hard drive.

Again, it's all about how you intend to use it. Pick the best system to suit your individual needs.

Edit: Just FYI, if you do choose Vista perchance, do not download any automatic updates. They always screw up your computer if you have lots of added programs on your PC for some odd reason. Not like they do anything anyway, but it's a good thing to take note of.

I have to respectfully disagree with this opinion. Other than support for some wifi hardware, and perhaps some older devices like scanners with proprietary interfaces, there's very little hardware that Linux doesn't support out of the box. In fact, it can be much harder to build a Windows machine from scratch since you'll often need to dig up manufacturers' drivers for various hardware devices like network cards that are supported natively in any modern Linux distribution.
My daughter has a Dell notebook running Ubuntu, and I have two desktop machines running Fedora 8. (I also have a server and a firewall both running CentOS.) I don't care about playing games on a PC; we have a PS3 for that. I can't think of a task I've needed to do on a desktop machine that I haven't been able to do using Linux in the three or so years I've been using it as my only desktop OS.

As a HTPC, Audio Visual enthusiast, it's not wifi that's the issue, GFX cards,TV tuners, Sound cards - and by what I mean by hardware support is full functionality not it works but is crippled. Ie - on the fly dolby digital encoding, UVD decoding, audio over HDMI, RAID controllers. Hell even my UPS wasn't able to used properly by Linux. They may not be common in in your environment but people use them and need them. Now some of these hardware features of are more common than others, and lack of Linux support may be the fault of manufacturers but at the end of the day it's not a question of who is to blame - it's does it work as well as it does on windows? EG: I have my doubts Bluray will ever be supported properly. Like it or not it is a valid piece of consumer hardware and gaining momentum. AFAIK copying it to HDD to date (which constitutes a crime in some countries) is the only method. The method is slow and cumbersomehttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...BluRayAndHDDVD

Vista gets blasted for hardware incompatibilty as well, I'm simply applying the same logic behind that as well. Honestly if I go to newegg and randomly pick out a piece of hardware what are the odds that it will work in a windows environment but not on a Linux environment. Now repeat that but reverse the positions. What is more likely?

Now Linux is better at some things - it is more fault tolerant, it is more secure due to architecture but there's far too many compromises in my environment/circle of users to say its a viable full time o/s. In specific situations no doubt it's a YES, but the moment I have to compromise functionality or dual boot well I can't really say its a full time O/S can I...

As others have said, it gets back to what you want to use a computer for. Your list of requirements is pretty niche, even for people as oriented to video and graphics as most AS members. For the vast majority of people who use a computer to browse the web, read email, write documents, listen to music, watch videos, and create graphics, Linux and the broad array of open-source applications it supports is a fine alternative to Windows.

(I'd also take issue with some of the specific objections you raise, but that would move this discussion too OT given the OP's original question.)

aye, outside of certain families of wireless cards and a few obnoxious printers, I've had absolutely no problem with any hardware and ubuntu playing nicely in the last several years. I hear random people have issues with a certain camera or mp3 player once in a while.

You'll find that less the case with newer motherboards (not surprisingly). I had to compile my own ALSA just to get the sound working (since the one in the Ubuntu repositories didn't work at all, and in addition still had to mess with modprobe) and the same went for the kernel, due to some highly annoying wlan bug. I still can't get my media player to work with it, however I think this is more a case of the player manufacturer screwing up with the firmware rather than being a Linux fault.

But yes, once you get it all working, and hope that on the next update you won't be on square one once again, it should be all good and set for the future.

__________________

"Light and shadow don't battle each other, because they're two sides of the same coin"

Actually it's the driver support that sucks in Linux, in the audio/visual department. Oh, and not to mention, the bright idea with most Linux video players have a truly crappy slider, the philosophy behind which escapes me totally (see I want the video to go THERE, EXACTLY THERE, no no, I don't want steps, I want it THERE, I clicked on the slider cause I want it THERE THERE THERE THERE!). Oh and I don't want to actually have to hack the place via the use of some totally weird and retarded ALSA commands in config files to get 7.1 working, and even then, it's a laughable upmix (right now the center speaker doesn't work). No proprietary Dolby/DTS/ProLogic support (which my dedicated soundcards happen to support). And where ATI's drivers don't have a bug (kinda rare really, ATI's drivers suck so bad it's insane), Nvidia's do.

NOT that it's Linux's fault. But unless it gets some serious support, I'm sticking to good, old windows for main, hassle-free OS (yes, I don't know about the rest, Vista hardly has any problems I'm aware of in 1.5 year of use - besides the companies giving it "Linux support" up to 6 months after it came out), and Ubuntu/Fedora for secondary/experimenting. Sure people who just browse and check emails, with two speakers and onboard cards will hardly feel any different in Linux. But other things need premeditation in the software/hardware level, and I doubt many care about doing that. Those browsing/mailing fellows will still want MSOffice and all those nice Windows programs, not that I blame them. Most opensource software I use are out of need cause I can't pay for all the commercial ones. Although I'm thankful I actually found some to replace stuff like Nero/Roxio with.

All in all, Linux is great, but I'd have voted for Vista at this point in time

I was a full-time Linux user at home up until a couple years ago when I got a Mac. Sound card support sucked. Oh sure most cards had basic functionality working but they didn't work all that well in my experience. I had like 4 different sound cards during the time I was using Linux on the desktop. Out of all of them my Audigy 2 value was the closest to working properly. I had multi-channel audio and hardware mixing. The microphone never worked properly and if I turned the volume up past 87 in alsamixer everything sounded over-amped. Even at lower volumes it didn't sound nearly as well as it did in Windows. My Turtle Beach Santa Cruz had hardware mixing but lacked proper multi-channel support. My two onboard cards had various issues. One didn't support multi-channel out. The other supported multi-channel out but had the port assignments on the back of the board different than Windows so I'd have to move cables when booting in the different OSes. That card also did weird stuff with power management (I think) so if sounds weren't playing for a while on the card it'd go to sleep or something and then the next sound that played would have the first second or two chopped off because the card wasn't yet up. That and it popped every time a sound started playing. So annoying.

I initially had an ATI card when I first started using Linux full time. That didn't last long. The drivers were terribly broken. I still remember one particularly odd bug that only appeared when using kwin (kde's window manager). If you moved the mouse to the top of the screen the cursor would jump to the right by a number of pixels. The openGL performance (when it didn't hang the X server) was awful. You couldn't have more than one video player outputting to XV at a time. When I got an Nvidia driver most of the issues were gone but there were and still are performance issues with 2D apps. Take subpixel font rendering as an example (like cleartype on windows). It's unaccelerated with Nvidia drivers still (AFAIK) so scrolling on a page with a lot of text or having a terminal scroll quickly will devour CPU cycles. This is especially noticeable on my slower P4 machine at work. Yeah it's wonderful that the window manager is composited so you can have wobbly or transparent windows but the contents of the windows are still rendered in software and so it's still slow as hell.

I still use Linux on my workstation at work. I have no speakers connected to the machine so I have no idea if sound works and the nvidia card in my machine is so old I have to use the 96xx series of drivers which don't work correctly with the current release of xorg so I'm stuck with the open source nv driver. The nv driver is causes issue with the mouse cursor. There's a black line at the tip of the cursor which only appears when it hovers over a white background. I also had issues with the cursor flashing if what was below was moving. That and the nv driver is slow as hell. Flash ads on web pages bring my machine to a crawl. Just scrolling on more complex pages like slashdot (the comments section of the page) are also slow as hell. I'd use Windows but my work involves keeping a ton of ssh sessions open so having a tabbed terminal and multiple desktops is more important to me. Ideally I'd like to have a Mac but they won't buy me one.

In general I would tend to say Windows for most people because pretty much everything works with little to no hassle involved. I hooked my brother up with Linux and he loves it, but he likes to tinker with computers like I do so it wasn't a problem. There's no way I'd do that with my sisters because they're pretty much standard users and they would be calling me for tech support

I use gnu/linux (Ubuntu 64bits) 90% of the time, and windows (XP 64) just for gaming.

There are many Linux distributions you can try, use the one you like the most. Ubuntu is one of the most popular distros, it is trying hard to be user friendly. The key to success here is join their forums and chat, and ask away whatever crosses your mind. This is a little different from communities from other distros, which expect you to do some searching and reading on your own before asking questions.

Switching to Free Software might be a difficult at first, but a well rewarded effort in the end.

As for hardware, all you have to do is be careful before purchase. Check if something works well (again, ask in the forums, etc). Some people blame it on alternative OSes, but its the hardware manufacturer who chooses to support things outside of windows or not. The best hardware usually needs zero config, i mean, you can actually purchase a printer, plug it in Ubuntu and its already configured and working with you doing nothing. While another model/brand (specially cheap ones) might actually never work.

If you have compatible hardware, installing is a breeze, and usage is not too different from MacOS X or Windows, same window, icon, menu, pointer paradigm.

Epyon9283: I'd say its ironic you didn't have it the other way around, i mean, an old ATI 9500 or older at work and a more recent nvidia card at home; you would have been surprised. The older ATI's can use the open source driver, and unlike its nv counterpart, it supports 3D. One reason MacOS X seems to always work without issues, is because Apple has a tight control on what hardware you can use. If i could force you somehow to only find good hardware, your linux experience would have been flawless as well.

Epyon9283: I'd say its ironic you didn't have it the other way around, i mean, an old ATI 9500 or older at work and a more recent nvidia card at home; you would have been surprised. The older ATI's can use the open source driver, and unlike its nv counterpart, it supports 3D. One reason MacOS X seems to always work without issues, is because Apple has a tight control on what hardware you can use. If i could force you somehow to only find good hardware, your linux experience would have been flawless as well.

As for your machine at work, at least in Ubuntu, the package nvidia-glx-legacy still exists and should work with your card.

I used to buy my hardware with Linux in mind. That's why everything works (for the most part) on my PC at home. At work I don't have that luxury with the desktops. The servers I purchase all support Linux quite nicely.

My machine at work is running Fedora 9. I've tried to standardize around Fedora and CentOS at work. The only boxes with Ubuntu on them aren't controlled by me.